The following essay, King finds connections between Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr and Gerhart Hauptmann's Der Ketzer von Soana.

“Si quiere usted enviarme algo envíeme de Hauptmann.”1 When Miguel de Unamuno wrote these words in 1899 in a letter addressed to a friend in Berlin, he was interested in the writings of the German author Gerhart Hauptmann. Thirty-three years later a short novel by Unamuno was published under the title: San Manuel Bueno, mártir, the story of a priest tormented by religious doubt. Was Unamuno aware that in the meantime Gerhart Hauptmann had published a short novel called Der Ketzer von Soana (1919, The Heretic of Soana), about a priest tormented by religious doubt? Can there be some connection between the two?